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 Luco wrote:
I don't really know how to respond to the equating of your own child to that of a terrorist.

Fetus =/= child.

And the way to respond is to address my argument that a fetus does not have any of the characteristics which define who you are as a "person" instead of just a lump of meat.

i could of sworn that the potential results of screwing and ways to avoid the results were reviewed in middle school and again in high school

Sorry, people like you removed that from school and replaced it with the delusional idea that if we don't tell teenagers about sex they won't do it.

Are you willing to put your money where your outrage is and support all these children financially with increased taxes and welfare programs?

 Luco wrote:
Peregrine: One condition for life is that someone doesn't want to kill you? Really?

One of the conditions for a fetus becoming a person is that the mother doesn't want to prevent it from doing so. Otherwise it will never progress beyond the stage of being a non-person lump of meat, followed by being a non-person piece of medical waste. Therefore, by your argument, abortion is not a problem because the fetus is not yet in a state where all of the conditions for eventually becoming a person have been met.

Also, no, you can't just change from "person" to "life" like that. The fetus is alive, just like a plant is alive. However, we were talking about a higher standard than merely being alive.

If its alive it is a young version of its parents making it a young human. It doesn't matter what stage of life the being is in, whether it be in the mothers womb or a centenarian.

@d-usa I'm completely for using my tax money so that they can all grow up to be responsible and productive working adults, yes. I'm even more for a strong education system that encourages responsible behavior.

 sebster wrote:
Except that the issue has largely been one side, almost entirely religiously motivated, very intensely putting forward their claims ever since Roe v Wade, while the other side has dropped away almost entirely. Which makes sense, not many people continue to fight as intensely after they, you know, won.

Always good to have a foreigner tell me what's really up with American politics, but no, I assure you, the other side has not dropped away from the debate. One need only look at the convention to note that the Democrats actually keep it front and center.

None of which changes the fact that the majority of the country considers itself pro-life rather than pro-choice, and that the balance has been tipping in pro-life's favor for quite a while.

 Luco wrote:
Some time alone with porn cannot kill people because the sperm cells are not capable of making life on their own.

And a fetus is not capable of making "life" on its own, it requires the active participation of the mother to reach a point where it becomes a person. Left on its own the fetus will never become anything more than a dead lump of meat.

Also, a sperm cell does not need to be capable of making life because it IS alive, just like every other cell in your body. Murderer.

It ends the life of the beginnings of another person.

Potential to become another person =/= is another person.

Also, haven't I disproved your "potential" argument enough? Can't we move on to the part where you try to explain how the fetus is a person already, reveal your hilarious ignorance of the process of human development, and disappear in shame? Because I like that part.


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 Luco wrote:
@d-usa I'm completely for using my tax money so that they can all grow up to be responsible and productive working adults, yes. I'm even more for a strong education system that encourages responsible behavior.

So by "encourages responsible behavior" you mean that you're strongly opposed to abstinence-only sex education programs and laws that restrict easy access to (affordable) birth control? If you are, congratulations, you're slightly less of a hypocrite than most pro-lifers.


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 Luco wrote:
If its alive it is a young version of its parents making it a young human. It doesn't matter what stage of life the being is in, whether it be in the mothers womb or a centenarian.

And an egg cell is a young version of the mother by that standard, therefore any woman who doesn't get pregnant at every possible opportunity instead of allowing that cell to leave their body and die is guilty of murder. Have fun building new prisons for ~50% of humanity.

None of which changes the fact that the majority of the country considers itself pro-life rather than pro-choice, and that the balance has been tipping in pro-life's favor for quite a while.

Most abortion rights supporters wish it was never necessary, and just consider it better than not having it as an option.

How anyone can consider themselves pro-life while opposing birth control meds I'll never understand.


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Anyway, back on the original topic, does anyone see the story getting any traction? Any evangelicals passing it around?

A newborn can't live on its own, some mentally slowed people cannot live on their own, are they not a person?

A single cell that will remain a single cell is not a person. Specifically an egg and a sperm together is the creation of a person and beginning of that person's life. Willingly ending a person's life, regardless as to whether they have yet to reach outside of the mother's womb, are in the prime of their life, or old enough to be retired is irrelevant because it is the ending of a life.

You haven't disproved me at all, though I am starting to get bored of answering roughly the same point, though.

EDIT: Can't say I've seen anything on the story outside of here tbh.

 Peregrine wrote:
I didn't say it was likely, I said it was possible.

It isn't. It might be a real issue in the near future, but it isn't right now.

The stalemate is not so much that numbers are even, because they're not. It's everything to do with the way the political blocs line up.

And you're wrong about that. Abortion CAN change based on who wins the presidency (at least as much as any issue can change based on who wins the presidency), and there's a major push from the religious right to do exactly that.

And how well are they doing in that push exactly? Any chance they'll get Roe v Wade overturned?


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 Luco wrote:
There is no choice with a miscarriage, there is a choice with an abortion.

There's a choice to dedicate medical funding to stop the vast numbers of unborn dying in miscarriages. And yet no-one argues for that choice to be made. Why is that?

Intentional comes off as a priority compared to unintentional, I suppose anyway.

 Luco wrote:
EDIT: Can't say I've seen anything on the story outside of here tbh.

Yeah, one would think it might come up as something obviously inconsistent with his current statements:

Mittler wrote:“Well, I don't actually make the decision the Supreme Court makes and so they'll have to make their own decision…. I hope to appoint justices for the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue.”

He was definitely on board with Bain when they invested in Stericycle, though, according to the SEC filings was "the sole dispositive shareholder", and did make quite a pile of money on it. This was several years before anti-abortion groups started targeting the company, though.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/romney-bain-abortion-stericycle-sec


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 Luco wrote:
Intentional comes off as a priority compared to unintentional, I suppose anyway.

But in terms of protecting life, spontaneous natural abortions happen a lot more often.

 Luco wrote:
A newborn can't live on its own, some mentally slowed people cannot live on their own, are they not a person?

That's not at all the same and you know it. A newborn can't live without being provided with food, just like an adult can't live without food. A fetus, on the other hand, will die without a mother to host it. Absolutely, 100%, before a certain point there is nothing you can do to save it. No amount of giving it the basic essentials of life that everything needs will help, it's a dead lump of meat that will never develop into a full person.

A single cell that will remain a single cell is not a person.

It will only remain a single cell if it doesn't get a sperm cell and eventually progress to being a person. Just like a fetus will remain a blob of meat unless it is provided with various things required for it to eventually become a person.

Specifically an egg and a sperm together is the creation of a person and beginning of that person's life. Willingly ending a person's life, regardless as to whether they have yet to reach outside of the mother's womb, are in the prime of their life, or old enough to be retired is irrelevant because it is the ending of a life.

And yet you continue to fail to provide any justification at drawing the line at conception instead of earlier. Your choice is completely arbitrary. It isn't based on biological facts about when "personhood" develops, and it isn't based on a consistent application of the "potential" argument.

You haven't disproved me at all, though I am starting to get bored of answering roughly the same point, though.

You haven't answered it, you've just repeated yourself over and over again.

 Peregrine wrote:
Oh wait, you don't, because on some level you don't actually believe your own propaganda.

Absolutely. It's fascinating to read the history of the abortion debate. To read articles from ministers and priests in the 1970s debating whether the soul is formed at conception or not. And to see how much of the pro-life debate at that time was tied to anti-contraception debate, and how much the underlying argument (or in some cases straight up argument) was tied to the idea that if there was no consequence for sex women would just slut around.

Now, the argument has evolved massively since then, and much of that straight up misogyny has thankfully disappeared. But those arguments have been refined, and many parts have come to be seen as absolute parts of the faith, thanks in large part to Roe v Wade essentially winning the argument for abortion in the US, meaning the pro-choice argument lost most of its energy, and left the pro-life camp to refine and further their claims largely unchallenged.

What this has left us with is a pro-life argument that's a very, very strange beast. It's become this thing born out of misogyny, but with all that misogyny subsequently stripped away, and left as this absolute, 100% conviction that conception is the absolute, 100% point of life, no questions asked. It's central point of the faith that's more modern than the Happy Meal. And it's entirely unquestioned - most pro-life people have simply never heard of a suggestion that if every fertilised egg is, as they believe, a human with a soul, then maybe something should be done about all those miscarriages.

 Mannahnin wrote:

 Luco wrote:
EDIT: Can't say I've seen anything on the story outside of here tbh.

Yeah, one would think it might come up as something obviously inconsistent with his current statements:

Mittler wrote:“Well, I don't actually make the decision the Supreme Court makes and so they'll have to make their own decision…. I hope to appoint justices for the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue.”

He was definitely on board with Bain when they invested in Stericycle, though, according to the SEC filings was "the sole dispositive shareholder", and did make quite a pile of money on it. This was several years before anti-abortion groups started targeting the company, though.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/romney-bain-abortion-stericycle-sec


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 Luco wrote:
Intentional comes off as a priority compared to unintentional, I suppose anyway.

But in terms of protecting life, spontaneous natural abortions happen a lot more often.

interesting.

You would think, but that wasn't a point I showed up to debate on Hmm... Do you have a source for your statements on the natural being more often? I'm curious to see.

 sebster wrote:
And how well are they doing in that push exactly? Any chance they'll get Roe v Wade overturned?

By imposing additional restrictions on abortion to the point that it becomes impossible for most people to get one. They've openly admitted that's the strategy: pass laws banning abortion after a certain point (earlier than when the brain develops), require waiting periods so you have to take multiple days off work which you might not be able to afford, require the doctor to inform you about "risks" which are outright lies intended to scare women into keeping the child, cut funding to doctors that provide abortions and force them to close, require parental notification so teenagers can be safely locked away at home before they can get an abortion, etc.

End result: Roe v Wade is still there, but it becomes an irrelevant bit of historical trivia. Imagine a hypothetical case of gun ownership where the supreme court rules that you have a right to own a battleship (after all, a 16" naval gun makes a pretty good concealed carry weapon!). However, you still have the tiny little problem that you're never going to be able to obtain one, even if it would be 100% legal for you to own it once you did.

 Peregrine wrote:

 sebster wrote:
And how well are they doing in that push exactly? Any chance they'll get Roe v Wade overturned?

By imposing additional restrictions on abortion to the point that it becomes impossible for most people to get one.

I wonder if they borrowed that strategy from the Left's approach to guns, or if the Left borrowed it from the Right's approach to abortion.

 Luco wrote:
Intentional comes off as a priority compared to unintentional, I suppose anyway.

Priority is just a dodge, because there's no need to prioritise. There is no requirement to choose one over the other, you can spend just as much time lobbying for pro-life positions, and still supporting funding into miscarriage research.

And yet no-one does it. There are no medical charities towards this killer of millions of people, in the same way that we have heart disease and breast cancer charities. It's almost as if people don't really think of that miscarriage as the death of a person.


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 Peregrine wrote:
By imposing additional restrictions on abortion to the point that it becomes impossible for most people to get one. They've openly admitted that's the strategy: pass laws banning abortion after a certain point (earlier than when the brain develops), require waiting periods so you have to take multiple days off work which you might not be able to afford, require the doctor to inform you about "risks" which are outright lies intended to scare women into keeping the child, cut funding to doctors that provide abortions and force them to close, require parental notification so teenagers can be safely locked away at home before they can get an abortion, etc.

At the state level... focus dude.

 Seaward wrote:
I wonder if they borrowed that strategy from the Left's approach to guns, or if the Left borrowed it from the Right's approach to abortion.

(For the record, I oppose the efforts by some of my fellow liberals to do exactly that.)


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 sebster wrote:
At the state level... focus dude.

Yes, but the party doing it is the same. Why exactly should anyone believe that the republican part won't try to pass those laws at the national level if/when they gain the ability to do it?

 Luco wrote:
Hmm... Do you have a source for your statements on the natural being more often? I'm curious to see.

Any basic textbook covering pregnancy? This is just a basic fact of biology. Medical estimates are that somewhere between 25%-50% of all pregnancies naturally abort, with the rate increasing a lot with the age of the woman. Are we going to get angry at God, for killing all those babies? Or at women, for increasing the rate by a fraction? Or ban women or men over 25, or 40, from breeding because it substantially increases the percentages of lost pregnancies?

Here's from the wiki page on miscarriage:

wikipedia wrote:Determining the prevalence of spontaneous abortions is difficult. Many happen very early in the pregnancy, before a woman may know she is pregnant. Treatment of women without hospitalization means medical statistics misses many cases.[15] Prospective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies abort by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's last menstrual period),[53][54] however, other reports suggest higher rates. One fact sheet from the University of Ottawa states, "The incidence of spontaneous abortion is estimated to be 50% of all pregnancies, based on the assumption that many pregnancies abort spontaneously with no clinical recognition."[55] The NIH reports, "It is estimated that up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15–20%."[56] Clinical abortions (those occurring after the sixth week LMP) occur in 8% of pregnancies.[54]

The risk of aborting decreases sharply after the 10th week LMP, i.e., when the fetal stage begins.[57] The loss rate between 8.5 weeks LMP and birth is about two percent; loss is “virtually complete by the end of the embryonic period."[58]

The prevalence increases considerably with age of the parents. One study found that pregnancies from men younger than 25 years are 40% less likely to end in spontaneous abortion than pregnancies from men 25–29 years. The same study found that pregnancies from men older than 40 years are 60% more likely to end in spontaneous abortion than the 25–29-year age group.[59] Another study found that the increased risk in pregnancies from older men is mainly seen in the first trimester.[60] Yet another study found an increased risk in women, by the age of 45, on the order of 800% (compared to the 20–24 age group in that study), 75% of pregnancies ended in spontaneous abortion.[61]

 Luco wrote:
interesting.

You would think, but that wasn't a point I showed up to debate on Hmm... Do you have a source for your statements on the natural being more often? I'm curious to see.

The numbers of confirmed miscarriages are almost equal to the number of abortions. There's about a million of each each year.

But then there's an unknown number of miscarriages where the woman didn't know she was pregnant. Some estimates say that possibly a quarter of all pregnancies are miscarried in the few weeks, before the woman has any signal she would be pregnant.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Yes, but the party doing it is the same. Why exactly should anyone believe that the republican part won't try to pass those laws at the national level if/when they gain the ability to do it?

None, but my point is that they cannot in short or medium term gain the ability to do so. So instead you fight battles over issues that are actually being fought.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Luco wrote:
A newborn can't live on its own, some mentally slowed people cannot live on their own, are they not a person?

That's not at all the same and you know it. A newborn can't live without being provided with food, just like an adult can't live without food. A fetus, on the other hand, will die without a mother to host it. Absolutely, 100%, before a certain point there is nothing you can do to save it. No amount of giving it the basic essentials of life that everything needs will help, it's a dead lump of meat that will never develop into a full person.

A single cell that will remain a single cell is not a person.

It will only remain a single cell if it doesn't get a sperm cell and eventually progress to being a person. Just like a fetus will remain a blob of meat unless it is provided with various things required for it to eventually become a person.

Specifically an egg and a sperm together is the creation of a person and beginning of that person's life. Willingly ending a person's life, regardless as to whether they have yet to reach outside of the mother's womb, are in the prime of their life, or old enough to be retired is irrelevant because it is the ending of a life.

And yet you continue to fail to provide any justification at drawing the line at conception instead of earlier. Your choice is completely arbitrary. It isn't based on biological facts about when "personhood" develops, and it isn't based on a consistent application of the "potential" argument.

You haven't disproved me at all, though I am starting to get bored of answering roughly the same point, though.

You haven't answered it, you've just repeated yourself over and over again.

Its the same within the parameters of 'cannot live on its own.' A newborn will die without a mother to host them. A severely slowed person will not survive without someone to take care of them.

The 'blob of meat' as you call it, has the capability to become a person within the support structure yes. An egg will not make life solely within the support structure but needs outside influence.

Ok. When does one become a person? When does one become a biological being? When the egg and the sperm get together to create you.You start growing from this moment forward. You cannot exist as a sperm and an egg separately so obviously you are not forming at that point. After the egg and sperm get together you start to be created. Therefor you start at that point. I see no distinction between a 'non human, human' and a human regardless as to the stage of life. I can't see why you are willing to terminate a life just because its in its early stages.

If you want a different answer ask for one, ask for explanation, don't ask roughly the same question over and over again. I've explained everything insofar as you've asked. Also, you haven't really put up any new information, I've given you an answer. Best I figure at this point, you just don't like the answer I've given.

 Luco wrote:
Its the same within the parameters of 'cannot live on its own.' A newborn will die without a mother to host them. A severely slowed person will not survive without someone to take care of them.

And a healthy adult human will die if you lock them in a sealed room with no food. Therefore we conclude one of two things:

1) No human or fetus or egg is capable of living on its own, therefore none of them have potential and we can kill any of them.

or

2) The "potential" argument is incoherent .

Finally, your comment about the newborn is especially stupid because a newborn is already a person. We don't need to talk about its potential to become a person, it already has the capacity to feel pain, a sense of self, etc.

The 'blob of meat' as you call it, has the capability to become a person within the support structure yes. An egg will not make life solely within the support structure but needs outside influence.

Only because of your narrow and arbitrary definition of the "support structure".

Ok. When does one become a person?

When one develops a sense of self, high-level brain functions, capacity to feel and experience, memories, etc. Current consensus is that these things appear somewhere between 20-25 weeks after conception to shortly after birth.

When does one become a biological being?

Who cares. "Biological being" is a broad category that includes everything from an adult human to a single-celled bacteria. It's absolutely meaningless for determining whether an entity deserves a right to life.

When the egg and the sperm get together to create you.You start growing from this moment forward. You cannot exist as a sperm and an egg separately so obviously you are not forming at that point. After the egg and sperm get together you start to be created. Therefor you start at that point. I see no distinction between a 'non human, human' and a human regardless as to the stage of life.

That's YOUR arbitrary choice of origin point. It has no support from an argument for "potential" (since the egg and sperm each have potential before that point), and it has no argument from our knowledge of brain development (since that doesn't happen until much later). The only support for your "argument" is that your imaginary friend told you it works that way.

I can't see why you are willing to terminate a life just because its in its early stages.

For the same reason that I'm willing to squish a cockroach: it's alive, but it isn't a person.

If you want a different answer ask for one, ask for explanation, don't ask roughly the same question over and over again. I've explained everything insofar as you've asked. Also, you haven't really put up any new information, I've given you an answer. Best I figure at this point, you just don't like the answer I've given.

You haven't explained anything, you've just said some variant of "because I said so" and ignored everything I've said about brain complexity, capacity to feel pain, etc. How about providing some evidence that the moment of conception actually changes the cells in some meaningful way?

A healthy adult human is perfectly capable of hunting or foraging while the fetus, newborn, and slow cannot.

You're point is as arbitrary as mine, if not more so for being a point in time that you've determined well after much of the person has developed, instead of the actual beginning of formation of a being.

Again, cockroaches are not human and therefor cannot become people. Why do innocent humans not deserve to live?

Imaginary friend? Classy.


On Topic: No idea about the bias but
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/309400/obama-attack-coming-down-road-stericycle

Bain negotiated the Stericyle investment deal in November 1999, nine months after Romney said he left.

 Luco wrote:
A healthy adult human is perfectly capable of hunting or foraging while the fetus, newborn, and slow cannot.

I said locked in a sealed room with no food. Even an adult human is dependent on outside entities for survival, whether those entities are a parent, a fruit tree, whatever. Left on its own, a healthy adult human will die. Therefore the adult human has no "potential" by your standard.

Plus, as I said, a healthy adult human (or newborn) is already a person. We don't need to resort to arguing about its potential when we can simply look at the things that actually define "personhood".

You're point is as arbitrary as mine, if not more so for being a point in time that you've determined well after much of the person has developed, instead of the actual beginning of formation of a being.

No, my point is based on facts related to the development of the human brain. We know with absolute certainty that a fetus does not develop a brain until at least 20-25 weeks, so that is the earliest possible point where it could have a sense of self, higher brain functions, or any of the other things that make you "you" and not just a blob of meat.

Your point is arbitrary because the only change in the cells at conception is that now they have full DNA instead of just half. They haven't gained or lost any "potential", they haven't gained or lost any brain function, and they certainly haven't developed beyond the level of a cockroach. The only significance that moment has is that you've arbitrarily picked it.

Again, cockroaches are not human and therefor cannot become people.

Neither is a fetus. See previously mentioned facts that it does not have self awareness, capacity to feel, memories, etc. In terms of what it currently has (since we've already established that the "potential" argument is inconsistent nonsense) it is actually significantly behind the mental development of a cockroach.

Why do innocent humans not deserve to live?

Innocent humans deserve to live.

Blobs of meat that are not yet human in any meaningful sense have no rights, and can be discarded at will.

Imaginary friend? Classy.

Sorry, the idea of god is just too absurd to take seriously. Perhaps you should outgrow your imaginary friend if you don't want me to laugh at it?

an adult doesn't need to be taken care of and can fend for itself in a natural world. Locking someone in a room to make them the same is absurd.

the developement of the human brain isn't necessary for life, unless you're admitting that someone with severe retardation or suffered brain damage in the womb, but is out of it, isn't a person.

You can't live with half the dna, you don't exist yet if you don't have both sets because those are the building blocks.

-sigh-

It is apparent to me that given you have gained nothing from this conversation, are being somewhat hostile and making absurd statements, causing the conversation to go in a circle and mocking something you haven't even attempted to understand that this is entirely pointless.

 Luco wrote:
an adult doesn't need to be taken care of and can fend for itself in a natural world. Locking someone in a room to make them the same is absurd.

You said potential without any outside assistance. If you want to apply that consistently, if you exclude the egg getting its matching sperm you also have to exclude the adult having edible plants or animals nearby. Or you can grant the adult its ability to forage, in which case we also have to grant the egg cell its ability to obtain matching sperm.

Or we could admit that the whole "potential" argument is stupid and use a definition that actually captures what it means to be a person. But I guess that's not an option, since your imaginary friend said that any definition which doesn't prove that life begins at conception must be wrong.

the developement of the human brain isn't necessary for life, unless you're admitting that someone with severe retardation or suffered brain damage in the womb, but is out of it, isn't a person.

Sigh.

LIFE =/= PERSON.

Why is this so complicated? An entity can be alive but not a person. That's why if you cut yourself we give you a bandage, we don't send you to prison for murdering all of those blood cells.

And a person with brain damage is still a person. They have reduced mental function, but it's still there. A fetus that doesn't have brain cells yet does not.

You can't live with half the dna, you don't exist yet if you don't have both sets because those are the building blocks.

And "you" can't live without all those brain functions either. There might be something with your DNA, but it's a lifeless blob of meat. Therefore the standard of having a complete set of DNA is inadequate for defining personhood.

It is apparent to me that given you have gained nothing from this conversation, are being somewhat hostile and making absurd statements, causing the conversation to go in a circle and mocking something you haven't even attempted to understand that this is entirely pointless.

You're right, it does go in circles, because you keep posting some variant of "because I said so", continuing to use the same argument after I've demonstrated multiple times how it's laughably inconsistent, and substituting "life", "person", "human", etc whenever you feel like it. You have the ability to stop the circle at any time, just:

1) Drop the argument from "potential", since you can't seem to apply it in any remotely consistent way.

2) Address my argument that "you" are defined by high-level brain functions, not DNA, not "potential".

3) Without resorting to the disproved "potential" argument, explain exactly who abortion harms on a level that deserves punishment (IOW, above the level of harm I cause a cockroach by squishing it).

4) Stop switching terms and using "life" to mean "person", since "life" is an incredibly broad category that covers many entities which we do not want to grant rights (like bacteria or blood cells).

And yes, I've tried to understand god. In fact, that's the problem, since the more I learn about it the more hilarious it is that people actually believe that nonsense.

 Luco wrote:

the developement of the human brain isn't necessary for life, unless you're admitting that someone with severe retardation or suffered brain damage in the womb, but is out of it, isn't a person.

You do realise that you DO need a brain to be able to be alive right? That just besides thinking, the brain also controls all the involuntary actions that your body performs that allows you to live? Like breathing, digesting food, etc...

You also realise that a foetus before 25 weeks doesn't have a functioning brain whatsoever and therefore can't be considered a person by any definition?

You also realise that a person with a mental retardation or that has suffered brain damage still HAS a functioning brain and is therefore still able to perform all the actions that define a normal person (albeit in a different way)?

You know what we call a person that has suffered brain damage to such an extent that it can't live without outside help (like life-supporting machines)? Brain dead. Do you know what we do to people that are declared brain dead? We shut down the life supporting machines and allow the body to die because it doesn't have a brain to keep it alive. Are you saying that we should lock up all those doctors and nurses because they are committing murder?

Finally, it has been shown to you that by all accounts, natural miscarriages happen at least at the same rate as abortions (pro-tip: they don't, they have a much higher occurrence rate than abortions), why aren't you rallying against all these murders? Where is your outrage at a cold and unfeeling "god" that murders all these "persons"?

I had a reply, but I realized I'm throwing pearls before swine.

You answer your own point and you need me to spell it out for you, really?

 Luco wrote:
I had a reply, but I realized I'm throwing pearls before swine.

You answer your own point and you need me to spell it out for you, really?

Really, please do, because you haven't answered anything yet, other than evading the points you are presented with while repeating your own unfounded personal opinion over and over and over and over...

 sebster wrote:
And yet you don't see the pro-life crowd throwing money at that issue, seeing what science can do to prevent every one of those miscarriages. Which makes it clear that the motivations for the pro-life crowd are not really just about protecting unborn life, doesn't it?

Yes, I'm quite convinced that the "Pro-Life" crowd doesn't actually give a damn about the "unborn children" they're ranting about.